“How would you like to have me dance for you?” Laura asked abruptly.  “You know I take fancy dancing.”

“Oh, Laura,” Maida said delightedly “will you?”

“Of course I will,” Laura said with her most beaming expression.  “You wait here while I go downstairs and get into my costume.  Watch that door, for I shall make my entrance there.”

Maida waited what seemed a long time to her.  Then suddenly Laura came whirling into the room.  She had put on a little frock of pale-blue liberty silk that lay, skirt, bodice and tiny sleeves, in many little pleats—­“accordion-pleated,” Laura afterwards described it.  Laura’s neck and arms were bare.  She wore blue silk stockings and little blue-kid slippers, heelless and tied across the ankles with ribbons.  Her hair hung in a crimpy torrent to below her waist.

“Oh, Laura, how lovely you do look!” Maida said, “I think you’re perfectly beautiful!”

Laura smiled.  Lifting both arms above her head, she floated about the room, dancing on the very tips of her toes.  Turning and smiling over her shoulder, she bent and swayed and attitudinized.  Maida could have watched her forever.

In a few moments she disappeared again.  This time she came back in a red-silk frock with a little bolero jacket of black velvet, hung with many tinkling coins.  Whenever her fingers moved, a little pretty clapping sound came from them—­Maida discovered that she carried tiny wooden clappers.  Whenever her heels came together, a pretty musical clink came from them—­Maida discovered that on her shoes were tiny metal plates.

Once again Laura went out.  This time, she returned dressed like a little sailor boy.  She danced a gay little hornpipe.

“I never saw anything so marvelous in my life,” Maida said, her eyes shining with enjoyment.  “Oh, Laura how I wish I could dance like that.  How did you ever learn?  Do you practice all the time?”

“Oh, it’s not so very hard—­for me,” Laura returned.  “Of course, everybody couldn’t learn.  And I suppose you, being lame, could never do anything at all.”

This was the first allusion that had been made in Primrose Court to Maida’s lameness.  Her face shadowed a little.  “No, I’m afraid I couldn’t,” she said regretfully.  “But—­oh—­think what a lovely dancer Rosie would make.”

“I’m afraid Rosie’s too rough,” Laura said.  She unfolded a little fan and began fanning herself languidly.  “It’s a great bother sometimes,” she went on in a bored tone of voice.  “Everybody is always asking me to dance at their parties.  I danced at a beautiful May party last year.  Did you ever see a May-pole?”

“Oh, yes,” Maida said.  “My birthday comes on May Day and last year father gave me a party.  He had a May-pole set up on the lawn and all the children danced about it.”

“My birthday comes in the summer, too.  I always have a party on our place in Marblehead,” Laura said.  “I had fifty children at my party last year.  How many did you have?”